You can’t fly in Pattaya

I had a guy tell me the other day that he won't go to Pattaya because you can't fly. Puzzled I was confused. Why would you want to fly when you can just get a cab takes no more than 2 hours depending on traffic. But when he smiled I immediately realised what he was talking about. For a lot of people going to Pattaya means killing themselves or falling from a tall building to a messy death on the sidewalk.

What is it about Pattaya that people want to throw themselves off a building? Honestly I don't get it, if I was going to do it which there's no way in hell I would but for arguments sake I'd rather take the tallest skyscraper in Bangkok and have a longer more adrenaline packed flight down. 25 floors in a Jomtien apartment would go rather quick wouldn't you think?

While some of the failed pilots are unexplained most are put down as suicide and Pattaya isn't the only place guys do this either. Chiang Mai, Phuket, Bangkok also have huge number of deaths from jumping off buildings and off the bridges. Why do people do it? There's a lot of weired and wonderful drugs available for sale on Beach Road, I've never been sold flying tablets before maybe I went out at the wrong time.

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About Chris

Chris founded LivingThai.org in 2011 and has received over 3 million visitors. In 2017 he stopped writing new content (although does update the site) and is now focused on writing for his new website SlyNomad.com.

A couple of months ago I was staying in the top floor of a hotel on the corner of pattaya beach road and soi 2. After a flash flood of sorts we ventured out to the balcony to have a beer and a cigarette. Whilst looking at the beautiful view my friend slipped due to the wet tiles and lack of building codes that require non-slip surfaces on balconies. He grabbed on to a rickety railing that was below waist height and he was lucky he didn’t go over as there were no bolts on the end that grabbed.

I recon its a combination of the broken hearts club and bad building codes. I have a mate in Chaing Mai that fell off a building quite a few years back and he recons anywhere else in the world they would have had something to stop him being able to get on to the ledge.

As for the broken hearts, what I don’t get is why don’t they just go get another one? It’s not like there is a short supply.

its probably all 3 , some are “helped” to learn to fly , some just slip and fall and with Thai building codes they go over the edge and some are just depressed and see this as a way to end it……

We know someone who was depressed , an expat that lived in Thailand that ended it all in Pattaya ,

Watch for the signs of your buddies depression , its not something they can take back once they jump , this guy seemed OK the week before , if we knew he was that bad or thinking about it we could have probably talked him out of it , or at least tried